Heat removal is a prominent factor in computer system and data center design. The number of high performance electronics component such as high performance CPU and GPU packaged inside servers has steadily increased, thereby increasing the amount of heat generated and dissipated during the ordinary operation of the servers. The reliability of servers used within a data center decreases if the environment in which they operate is permitted to increase in temperature over time. Maintaining a proper thermal environment is critical for normal operating of these servers in data centers. It requires more efficient heat removal solutions especially in the cases of cooling these high performance servers. A significant portion of the data center's electric power is used for the cooling systems. As the number of high density servers within a data center increases, a greater portion of the power is commensurately consumed by the data center to cool electronic components within the servers. Therefore, it becomes more critical to design the cooling systems for the electronic rack and the data center, which can handle the constantly increasing heat density, and at the same time, improve energy efficiency.
In conventional data center structures, a computer room air conditioner (CRAC) or a computer room air handler (CRAH) circulates room recirculated air throughout a data center room. Conventionally, the CRAC/CRAH cools returning air and supplies the cooled air to the data center room and to the servers by blower fans. The CRAC/CRAH units extract the heat from the air and transfer it to a chiller plant, cooling tower, or external atmosphere. Both the IT fans and CRAC/CRAH blowers are used for moving the airflow pathing through the IT equipment and the CRAC/CRAH unit. A large portion of cooling energy is required for running server fans, CRAC/CRAH blowers and chillers. Eliminating chiller and these air moving devices can achieve a significant portion of cooling energy saving.